Is the end nigh for the degustation menu?

With Assiette, Bilson’s, Balzac, Pier and now Claude’s on Sydney’s fine-dining casualty list, is the degustation menu set to head the same way?

A couple of years ago, it seemed every second restaurant offered a ‘‘deg’’, but as one seasoned Sydney restaurateur commented last week: ‘‘We want to eat what we want to eat when we want to eat it.’’

Bronte’s Three Blue Ducks is the latest to de-deg, dropping its degustation menu from August 21.

‘‘We never set out to be a special-occasion restaurant,’’ says co-owner Darren Robertson, who, as a former head chef at Tetsuya’s, is no stranger to the
degustation menu.

Three Blue Ducks in Bronte is winding up its degustation menu later this month.
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Robertson says they are keen to be more accessible, and the current menu has turned many diners off.

There has also been a setback with the Ducks’ ambition to open at the former Alio site in Redfern. Building work had begun on the new Three Blue Ducks venue but Robertson says complications between a third party and the landlord derailed the project.

‘‘It’s not looking good, but I’m still hopeful,’’ he says. However, they’re now scoping alternative sites.

Source: Good Food, 5 August 2013